Jeffrey Garcia, who had worked for Rep. Joe Garcia, D-Fla., pleaded guilty Monday in a Miami-Dade County court to one felony and three misdemeanor charges. In a plea deal, he will serve 90 days in jail and 18 months on probation. The two men are not related.

Jeffrey Garcia was accused of directing an attempt to request nearly 2,000 absentee ballots through the Miami-Dad elections website for the Aug. 14, 2012, primary election. County contractors and staffers spotted the flurry of requests and thwarted the attempt. The requests were noted in a grand jury investigation, but the state attorney’s office closed the case in January without being able to identify a suspect.

In entering his guilty plea, Garcia told the judge that he intended for the ballots to be delivered to the registered voters. The congressman's campaign would then target those voters in an attempt to gain their votes.

Alvaro Mata / Miami Herald

Jeffrey Garcia, the former chief of staff to Congressman Joe Garcia, appears in court Monday to plead guilty.

In the end, the number of votes involved would not have swayed the election. The congressman easily won his primary and was re-elected last November.

Rep. Garcia has said that he was unaware of the scheme.

In a statement issued Monday, Rep. Garcia said that “while these actions were wrong … no ballots were touched or manipulated in anyway and no voter had their votes interfered with or impeded in any way.”